Two Cedar Grove Middle School students will travel to Memphis, Tenn., in March to participate in the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Southern Division Middle School Honors Chorus.

Seventh-graders Brittany Johnson and Bailey Watts are among nine students from North Carolina who will participate in the chorus. During the ACDA annual conference, the chorus will perform for music educators from across the southern region, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

A large group of teachers, principals and superintendents from Brunswick and Columbus counties met at Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation (BEMC) headquarters in Shallotte to join BEMC directors for the annual Bright Ideas Educational Grant awards luncheon on Thursday, Nov 12.

The co-op awarded $33,914 in grants, the highest amount awarded since the beginning of the program in 1994. Bright Ideas grants are awarded for creative teaching programs that are not funded within the usual school budget process.

Water temperatures remain higher than normal, but fish are feeling the inevitable push of the upcoming winter season, as hot-water species leave the area and cold-water species become the target of anglers.

From now until the early spring, speckled trout and red drum will be the premier inshore fish.

Shallotte police charged the following people and investigated the following incidents during the past week. Information is taken directly from the police reports.

•Police charged Timothy Alfred Gaskill, 43, of 1510 Shady Rest St., Shallotte, with driving while impaired and DWI habitual. He was at the intersection of Main and Wall streets. He was taken to the Brunswick County Detention Center on a $10,000 secured bond.

The Aggressive Criminal Enforcement (ACE) Team is a support unit, whose primary functions are traffic enforcement and assisting in the apprehension of drug traffickers in the county. The ACE team conducts driving while impaired and driver’s license checkpoints, as well as street-level investigations on controlled substances.

The ACE team works with the sheriff’s office K-9 Enforcement Team and Drug Enforcement Unit to apprehend narcotics suspects as well as saturating hot spots where criminal activity is reported.